The digital library will also let gamers play a game if it isn't fully downloaded

Sony is driving the point home that the PlayStation 4 is a flexible console -- unlike the Xbox One, perhaps -- with its digital library.

Neil Brown, Sony’s senior team leader of R&D, said that the PS4's digital library will allow gamers to play their titles anywhere on any machine.

He added that the PS4's digital library won't make you wait hours and hours for a title to download. Instead, gamers can play sections of the game as they become available, even if they aren't fully downloaded.

"You can visit your friends house you can log into your account and play any game from your digital library, which is good," said Brown. "But how useful is that if it takes half a day to download the game you want to play? With Play As You Download you get much quicker access to at least the first section of the game so you can start playing quicker. So this makes a digital library a practical option in the real world.”

A similar system also works on Blu-ray, chunks are automatically copied to the hard drive in the background. This means that after the first few minutes your game can rely on having faster read speeds from the hard drive. Which provides a better experience for players, and this is a completely background process for the player. They don’t have to wait for anything to install before playing the game. The game will launch as soon as the disk has been put in the drive.”

Sony also presented some of the upcoming PS4 games, such as "Elder Scrolls Online," which will launch next spring; "NBA 2K14"; "Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag"; "Killzone: Shadow Fall," which is due the first quarter of 2014; "Infamous: Second Son," which will be released the first quarter of 2014; "Final Fantasy Versus XIII," and "Kingdom Hearts III."

The PS4 and Microsoft's Xbox One are being heavily compared right now, since they're two of the most popular gaming consoles around. But the Xbox One has received a lot of criticism for the restrictions it placed on gamers, such as the used games ban and the new "always-on" digital rights management (DRM) system, which posed a problem for many people who are either in rural areas with slow Internet connections, travelling or experience Internet issues with providers.

Despite the fact that Microsoft retracted these features after major complaints, it has still left a bad taste in some customers' mouths.

A friend of mine is a producer at a major publisher. At E3 he told me that all the drama around the XBox One is something he knew was going to happen last winter.

Basically, Sony came to all the publishers and developers and asked them what they wanted out of the SDK, the hardware, distribution, everything. Microsoft came to everyone and basically said "here's what we're going to do, here's what you're going to do".

Microsoft already had probably the most locked-down and hostile of any platform or ecosystem with the 360, and it looked like they were going even farther down this path with the XB1.

At least competition made them finally reverse archaic policies like $40000 developer patch fees, etc etc. They were basically the only company doing this. They still don't have self-publishing like everyone else does, but its a start.

"Basically, Sony came to all the publishers and developers and asked them what they wanted out of the SDK, the hardware, distribution, everything. Microsoft came to everyone and basically said "here's what we're going to do, here's what you're going to do"."

And that... is EXACTLY the problem with MS lately. They keep pushing things that they want to do and ignoring things that their customers want. Good luck with that logic MS, its that kind of thinking that places once major players on irrelevant lists... Just ask RIMM and IBM about that.

Sony took the lessons from the PS3 very seriously and learned hard lessons from it. Self-evaluation and accountability are things that Japanese businesses have over the golden-parachute mentality of so many American companies. They put the ball in motion for the PS4's flawless launch years ago.

Fun fact: PS4s have been on the assembly line for months at the same time that the XB1 hardware and software was still being shaken out.

As for other Japanese companies, CEO Iwata of Nintendo acknowledged every misstep Nintendo has made so far and has taken a massive paycut for the last two years. They've taken major steps to try and fix what has been going wrong, all while not laying off employees. Meanwhile Mattrick of Microsoft is well known for pointing the finger and deflecting blame at everyone, then he jumps ship from MS to Zynga with a HUGE payout.